Understanding Louise Erdrich

Seema Kurup

Description

In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich's oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children's literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry.

Kurup elucidates Erdrich's historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich's writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich's writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.

Sujets

• Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
• Literary Criticism
• Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder
• Mother Love (TV series)
• True Identity
• Love Medicine
• Linda Hutcheon
• Midewiwin
• The Prodigal Daughter
• Nanabozho
• Evelina
• Aunt
• Leslie Marmon Silko
• Ojibwe
• Mary Rowlandson
• Clarissa
• Louise Erdrich
• Evelina Pitti
• Ojibwés
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• W. G. Sebald

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 30 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781611176247
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING LOUISE ERDRICH
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on
Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme | The Beats Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly | T. C. Boyle Truman Capote | Raymond Carver | Michael Chabon | Fred Chappell Chicano Literature | Contemporary American Drama Contemporary American Horror Fiction Contemporary American Literary Theory Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926-1970 Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970-2000 Contemporary Chicana Literature | Pat Conroy | Robert Coover | Don DeLillo Philip K. Dick | James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | Dave Eggers Louise Erdrich | John Gardner | George Garrett | Tim Gautreaux | John Hawkes Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley | James Leo Herlihy | David Henry Hwang John Irving | Randall Jarrell | Gish Jen | Charles Johnson | Diane Johnson Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy | Jack Kerouac | Jamaica Kincaid Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner | Ursula K. Le Guin | Jonathan Lethem Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet | Bobbie Ann Mason Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle | Carson McCullers W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Stephen Millhauser | Lorrie Moore Toni Morrison s Fiction | Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor | Joyce Carol Oates Tim O Brien | Flannery O Connor | Cynthia Ozick | Suzan-Lori Parks | Walker Percy Katherine Anne Porter | Richard Powers | Reynolds Price | Annie Proulx Thomas Pynchon | Theodore Roethke | Philip Roth | Richard Russo | May Sarton Hubert Selby, Jr. | Mary Lee Settle | Sam Shepard | Neil Simon Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder | William Stafford Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor | Kurt Vonnegut David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch | Eudora Welty Edmund White | Colson Whitehead | Tennessee Williams August Wilson | Charles Wright
UNDERSTANDING
LOUISE ERDRICH
Seema Kurup
2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-623-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61117-624-7 (ebook)
Front cover photograph by Ulf Andersen http://ulfandersen.photoshelter.com
This book is dedicated, as is all my life s good works, to my beloved parents, Dr. Siva Prasad Kurup and Usha Kurup, to whom I owe everything and without whom I am nothing.
CONTENTS
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Understanding Louise Erdrich
Chapter 2 Love Medicine, The Bingo Palace , and The Painted Drum
Chapter 3 Tracks, Four Souls , and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
Chapter 4 The Plague of Doves and The Round House
Chapter 5 The Birchbark House Series
Chapter 6 Poetry and Nonfiction
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931-2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers-explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives-and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe my undying gratitude to my dearest family for their unwavering love and edifying encouragement: my late paternal grandparents, Vasudevan and Subhadra Kurup; my maternal grandparents, Ramachandran and the late Lakshmi Vellodi; my aunts, Dr. Shanta Kurup and Suvarna Nair; my Nair cousins, nephews, and nieces; my uncle and aunt Dilip and Amritha Vellodi; and my Vellodi cousins. Special loving thanks to my beloved Kurt Neumann and to my dear friends Chris Padgett, Catherine Restovich and Patti Ferguson for their unwavering love and bolstering daily support. Thanks to my sweet Baron, for keeping my feet warm under the kitchen table as I pounded away on my computer instead of walking him.
Sincere thanks also goes to Prof. Wayne Kvam for introducing me to Louise Erdrich s work and giving me the priceless gift of self-confidence and to the faculty and administration at William Rainey Harper College for awarding me a sabbatical to finish my project. Thanks also to the University of South Carolina Press staff and editors, and special thanks to Jim Denton and series editor Prof. Linda Wagner-Martin for their patience, support, and the opportunity to share my understanding of Erdrich s work.
Gitchi-Migwetch goes to Louise Erdrich for her words-every single one. Thank God, Gizhe Manidoo, for everything.
CHAPTER 1
Understanding Louise Erdrich
Karen Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on June 7, 1954, to Rita Joanne Gourneau, enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, and Ralph Louis Erdrich, the son of German immigrants. Both of her parents were teachers at a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where Erdrich, the eldest of their seven children, was raised. 1 Wahpeton sits in the Red River Valley along the North Dakota-Minnesota border, and fictionalized versions of the town provide the setting of many of Erdrich s novels, revealing the profound impact this midwestern landscape had on her. Growing up, she was also exposed to and immersed in both sides of her rich cultural heritage-Ojibwe and Euro-American. As a child she found herself enchanted with the mysticism and mystery of the Old Testament: I was at the age of magical thinking and believed sticks could change to serpents, a voice might speak from a burning bush, angels wrestled with people. After I went to school and started catechism I realized religion was about rules. I remember staring at a neighbor s bridal-wreath bush. It bloomed every year but was voiceless. No angels, no parting of the Red River. It all seemed so dull once I realized that nothing spectacular was going to happen. 2 Other than her Old Testament fascination, Erdrich s early reading habits involved simply raiding the stacks of the local library indiscriminately for writers such as Leon Uris, James Michener, Ayn Rand, Herman Wouk, and James Welch, though she preferred John Tanner s The Falcon , William Shakespeare s plays, the Dune trilogy, Isaac Asimov and The Prophet . 3 Erdrich came from a family of storytellers, so she lived a richly imaginative early life. One of her greatest early literary influences was her father, Ralph Erdrich. Erdrich explains, My father is a terrific storyteller and made his relatives and the characters in the towns where he grew up almost mythic. 4 In addition to being an engaging storyteller who would often break into spontaneous poetic recitations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow or Robert Frost, he encouraged Erdrich to pursue her own creative star. To give the budding young writer even greater incentive, he would pay his daughter a nickel for each piece of creative writing she composed. 5
Erdrich also received the creative benefit of hearing family stories from both sides of her ancestry. The history of her paternal grandparents, Ludwig Friedrich Erdrich and Mary Kroll, a German immigrant butcher and his wife, ultimately inspired such novels as The Beet Queen (1986) and The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003) and The Butcher s Wife poems in her early poetry collections. Though Erdrich s German background is the focus of these important works, her authentic voice seems to come forth more naturally from her Ojibwe roots. Arguably her maternal grandparents, Patrice and Mary Gourneau, were a more significant influence on her literary work, which has as its primary focus the Ojibwe part of her heritage. Though raised Catholic, Erdrich was exposed to a great deal of Ojibwe culture: she heard traditional stories, participated in cultural ceremonies, and learned tribal history. Pat Gourneau was a prominent tribal elder and political activist for tribal rights. In describing the position of Gourneau in the family, Erdrich explained, He s kind of a legend in our family. He is funny, he s charming, he s interesting. He, for many years, was a very strong figure in my life. I guess I idolized him. A very intelligent man. 6 Gourneau was not only a beloved grandfather but also an undeniable force in the community. He s